dim3 Forum

Guys (and gals ...)

Right now, I have two main competitors, Unity and Torque. They've got me beat on PR (I'm trying to catch up), but I have a real chicken-and-egg problem that it's hard to get good PR without a released game but it's hard to draw people to me (who would make the games) without the PR!

For instance, Apple did a big article on Torque and Unity, but excluded dim3. They knew about me, but didn't include me because I didn't have a "shipping product." My line has always been that I concentrate on the engine, not a product. Unity and Torque got around this by releasing games THEMSELVES with the engine, even BEFORE it was marketted as an engine.

All you guys have done great work, but your projects are big and will take some time to be finished (especially you, Alex ). Luckily, I have Awnee: xRacing going for me, but that's not completed, either.

IMHO (no flame wars) I think dim3 is as good if not better than Unity or Torque (every engine has pieces that it does better than other engines, so a lot of times it's personal preference), and I want to attract as many people as I can to the project. I know I have a ton of downloads (over 10 gig a day since the 2.0 release), but we all know that completing a project as large as a 3D game is not something everybody can do. Probably only 1% -- if that -- of people that download any engine will actually do something with it (so, congratulations to you guys!)

So, I had an idea that I'd like to bounce of you ...

I start a pretty cliched first person shooter that will be given away as a game. I rough out a bunch of maps, use the dim3 demo weapons. Anybody that wants can include other maps or fix up mine, or include some of their weapons or models from their projects. Being cliche might be silly, but those kind of games sell like hot cakes.

Benefits? You get me to write the scripts for your monsters and we see how easy it is to split up work, and better than that, find the correct way to work together but at the same time seperately (it will be very independant, anybody can say "I want to work on this" and then just own it.)

This would be, of course, completely by choice. Nobody gets any points for trying or not trying, it's all something you'd want to do because it would be fun and help bring some more people to dim3.

Thoughts? I have a thick skin so if I'm way off base, be sure to tell me.

[>] Brian

i'm in .
i can do anything that has to do with making a game, i have to since i'm the only person doing computer work for my game :D.
i spesalize in:
making maps and placing characters on them
making, texturing, and uv mapping models

-here is a link to some of my work-

Note that doing this is going to make me go back and work really hard on map editor to try to get it as rapid as possible. I have a number of ideas that I want to try out.

I also want to open up the built-in primitives to be something that you guys can add to. What I'm thinking is you create a map, and every portal you put in the segments you want to be in a primitive, and then that map becomes a list of primitives that you can pull from.

This way, you can commonize elements of your maps. For instance, a couple different pillars or columns, or maybe some machines, etc.

If I make a showcase game, one thing I really want to point out is how *fast* it was developed (but still be quality, of course.)

[>] Brian

I'm in too, I might add some models, and I discovered a very nice way of making textures in A:M by modelling things then rendering them in a certain position.

teh1ghool Wrote:I'm in too, I might add some models, and I discovered a very nice way of making textures in A:M by modelling things then rendering them in a certain position.

By far, monster models are going to be my biggest missing element. Give me good monsters, and I'll write good scripts for them

For now, I'll probably just stick with the demo weapons to get going, and try to work on Editor then whip up some starter maps.

[>] Brian

I actuallly have a couple ideas. I could model them in time. But there's nothing comin' up fast, just not enough time to spend that long on it at once...

I could do a map if you want, my own game isn't going too well anyway.

What kind of map do you want..?

I'm quite good at map design and creation. I'll take weapon requests too, I'm pretty good at making weapons models quickly. I'm not so good at texturing them. :P


Great idea Brian, i would love for this to happen.
No offence, but the Dim3 demo weapons suck like nothing else.

Durandalski Wrote:Great idea Brian, i would love for this to happen.
No offence, but the Dim3 demo weapons suck like nothing else.

Well, I think what I'll be doing is this -- I'm going to work on 2.1 some more, than take a shot at making a map or two, then show everybody, and we'll figure out who wants to add what or work on what or tweak anything, etc.

What kind of maps are used, it doesn't really matter, it's not meant to be more "fun" and "show off" then anything.

[>] Brian

i can make monsters!!!!
thats what my games based on!
and i LOVE the idea for built in primitives, thats how most game engines work! i was about to ask for it! just make sure that you can edit one of them, and have a choice if editing that single one will edit all the rest to.